Day in the life: Jose Miguel Ferrer – Managing Director of Solarcentury in Iberia

December 15, 2017

In the fifth of our “Nice to meet you” series featuring Solarcentury people, Jose Miguel Ferrer tells us about his exciting role as Managing Director Iberia Region.

Q: Is there a typical day in your role?

So far, after more than one year in Spain, I haven’t had a typical day in my new role. Since we opened our new Spanish office in Valencia, I’ve been travelling almost every week. Our priority has been to deliver a solid pipeline, so the last year has been spent travelling between Valencia, Sevilla, Extremadura, Madrid and London. Now a few sites are reaching ready to build, so a new adventure is starting, dealing with banks, advisors and of course our construction partners.

Q: How important is work/life balance to you?

My personal and family life is very important to me. There are four members already in my own family and I love to spend time with them. I also love to spend time with my dad, mum and my brother. Unfortunately, I also like my job and being part of the solar energy industry, so sometimes I can be dragged into my job more than my family would like. Apart from my family, I also like running and the gym. When I do have some spare time, I love to meet up with my friends to have a beer. I’ve been living abroad a long time and I was missing them and Valencia a lot.

Q: How important is the Spanish market and where do you see it going over the next couple of years?

We can say now that the solar Spanish market has definitely come back, something that was debatable more than one year ago when I first came back to Spain. Spain is very important for Solarcentury. We have a more than 1GW pipeline under development and the country is a priority market for us. We want to connect at least 500MW before end of 2019. We think that the Spanish solar market will develop without subsidies, so this makes the opportunity even greater. If you add in storage and a well-developed trading energy strategy, I can see the Spanish market as one of the most important markets in Europe for Solarcentury.

Q: What advice do you have for anyone wanting to enter the solar industry? How did you get started?

The solar industry has grown very rapidly, with people like me working in many different countries over many years. Today, it’s very clear that solar energy is the energy of the future. Solar is already competitive with all other types of energy so I would encourage everyone to use their skills to work in solar and make this becomes an even larger sector.

I started in the solar sector almost by chance. I was working in a Spanish engineering company in the environmental department and there was an option to join the solar sales team and I decided to take the opportunity. By that time they were a bunch of young and very enthusiastic people doing 6MW per year and now they are an international company doing multi-MW projects. They gave me the opportunity to move to the UK and I was living in London for six years. During that time, I met Solarcentury and I joined them more than three years ago now.

Q: What’s different/special/exciting about working for Solarcentury?

Everything is special about working at Solarcentury. Since I joined Solarcentury, I’ve had the option to work in very different environments and to work and visit a lot of countries. I’ve been able to conduct business in several countries with very different cultures. Solarcentury has given me a very rich international experience from the professional but also from the personal point of view. I’ve met very good friends and professional people in Chile, Panama, Mexico, Argentina and of course in the UK. Internally we have a huge number of nationalities, people from many different parts of the world and it brings with it a huge variety of English accents and some very funny personal stories.

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